Interesting gender-differences research from Wash U:

• Smile! Study reveals milestone in development of gender roles [Washington University Record]
  "The greater tendency for girls and women to smile more than boys and men, at least in school yearbooks, begins between the ages of 9 and 12, is firmly rooted by age 14 and persists into adulthood," said David K. Dodd, Ph.D., the study's lead author and a senior lecturer in psychology in Arts & Sciences.
  
  No matter the social setting, adult women have been shown to smile more often and more enthusiastically than male counterparts -- a gender difference apparently nonexistent among newborns, toddlers and preschoolers.
  
  Despite a general loosening in gender roles, Dodd's analysis found that smiling habits of the sexes have changed very little in nearly three decades of yearbook photos.

(Thanks to Eric Stuebe, Sower of Chaos, for bringing it to my attention)

Okay, barring unforeseen events, I have to go to SXSW next year. It just looks and sounds like way too damn much fun.

Gadget alert: After a long period of under-using my Newton MessagePad 2000 as a glorified address book and travel alarm (you think I'm joking...), and after giving up on getting it to communicate with any of my modern Macs, and after thinking how nice it would be to have something smaller, lighter and easier to swap data with, I have joined the ranks of PalmOS users.

On Tuesday my translucent blue Handspring Visor Deluxe arrived, and I have to say I'm tickled. For only $260 or so, it delivers a lot of bang for the buck (especially compared to the Newton's much heftier four-figure price tag). There are many things it does not do that the Newton did (at least not right out of the box), but as I noted, I wasn't using the Newton for anything fancy anyhow, so I don't exactly miss the extras.

I love how light & small the Visor is; I'm taking it everywhere and not considering it a hassle. Yay for technological progress! And it will play MP3s someday too?? "Excuse me while I fall off my chair."

Something else I never did with my Newton.

So! Anybody in the market for a Newton?

Another new tool I got recently is the Wacom Graphire tablet (USB). I've wanted to try some freehand artwork for various projects for a long time, and trackpads, trackballs and mice just don't cut it; I'm looking forward to putting it through its paces.

I always read their name as "way'-comm" but apparently it's "wock'-em". (I heard an audio interview with one of their folks on MacCentral a while back.)

When I got it, they hadn't yet come out with the funky translucent ones. Oh well.

As a side note, I've been awfully lucky lately with hardware; the various gadgets, peripherals & add-ons I've installed have pretty much all worked as intended, right off the bat. Go USB & FireWire. Hot-plugging rules.

The Pinhead with a Pedigree needs better handlers, and maybe doesn't even want to win. Or maybe not. [Washington Post, Salon, Salon]

"No. I'm no longer giving money to anybody who calls me."
'Did we do something wrong?'
"You called me. It gives you an easy way to pretend we have some sort of bond, and it creates undue pressure to immediately respond to whatever your plea is. Forget it. Please don't call me again."

Apparently Windows 2000 doesn't free you completely from DLL Hell:

• Oops! IE 5.0 can lock out Win2K users [PC Week, seen on rc3]
  ...all you have to do is install Internet Explorer 5.0 with 128-bit encryption on Windows 2000 Professional or any W2K server. One reboot later you'll find that you have the ultimate in security: No one -- including you -- will be able to log in to the Windows 2000 system.

Eek.

It seems such a simple thing: the U.S. government overspent in the 80s, beyond what it was taking in. We're wasting large sums of money paying off the interest on that debt. If the government has extra money lying around, it should pay off as much as it can of the debt in order to reduce the interest it has to pay.

The money George W. says he's giving back with a tax cut is, in at least one sense, the money of future taxpayers. I loathe Gore's mantra 'risky tax scheme', but it almost applies in this case.

I also have a deep personal aversion to debt, and I don't like that the government has such a ridiculously huge one.

Opening night of Albert Herring was mostly fine with a couple of rough spots where the orchestra & I didn't quite agree even though rehearsals of those spots went dandily before...

Hey, we've got two more shots at it.